Wiley (Randy Wiley)

Wiley is the brand under which American pipe maker Randy Wiley signs his pipes with his own name. Wiley's first contact with the craft came not through pipes but through an apprenticeship in wood carving; he moved into pipes in the 1970s.

After working for two years at a pipe factory in Florida, he opened his own bench at age twenty-five. According to records, the workshop is located in Riverview, Florida, and turns out roughly a thousand pipes a year — a high figure for a one-man bench. Wiley is regarded as one of the recognized names of the independent workshop tradition that stood outside factory production in the postwar United States.

Approach to Form

Wiley's work falls largely into the freehand category. Though the maker has occasionally produced pieces close to classic shapes, he mostly determines the body's main line by looking at the grain of the block in hand; the shape emerges not from a pre-selected mold but from the briar's own texture. For this reason, no two pieces carrying the same name are copies of one another. The workshop uses both plateau and ebauchon blocks; on pieces where the plateau surface is left in place, the root's natural bark stays visible along the crown edge.